Angels Along My Path of Thorns: An Autobiography

By Gabriela A. Folgar de Shea

This story is about a girl growing up in Guatemala, a girl who had to endure many horrifying experiences within her family and from without. The book is an action-adventure story written in novel style. It encompasses her fight against the sexist dominant culture; a kidnapping; sexual, physical and mental abuse at the hands of a psychopathic criminal; an attempted murder; a daring escape; eventual rescue by caring friends and strangers; and victory through a determination to never be defeated.

The town of San Pedro Pinula was a town without electricity and the common mode of transportation to and from the surrounding farm and ranch land was and still is by foot or on horseback. In this setting the dramatic events that enveloped Gabriela give the story an atmosphere of a wild-west adventure.

In addition to the telling of the horrific events, there are poignant, loving, critical, and at times amusing portraits of Gabriela's mother, father, cousins, boarding school experiences, school mates, her first love and the angels who appeared to save her from certain ruin and near death. Interwoven in the story is a portrait of small town and rural life in one region of Guatemala; with descriptions of local customs, religion, housing, schooling, and transportation. There are more than thirty photographs of people and places that figure in the story. Detailed maps are also included to assist the reader.

Gabriela's story is one of victory over adversity through tenacity, bravery, and hope. Her fondest wish is that her story will be not just an exciting and excellent read, which it is; but will also be an inspiration to others who have suffered extreme adversity through no fault of their own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Oct 19, 2007
• ISBN: 9781466957374

Gabriela A. Folgar de Shea

Gabriela A. Folgar de Shea was born educated in Guatemala. She became a primary school teacher in 1967 and taught in Livingston, Guatemala until she immigrated to Canada in 1974. In Canada, she had to start all over and worked as a waitress and retail sales clerk until her English was perfected, permitting her to enter professional life once again. For the past nineteen years Gabriela has worked first as a family resource worker and later as a social worker for the City of Edmonton. Please go to www.gabshea.com for more information about Gabriela and her book.

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© Copyright 2007, 2012 Gabriela A. Folgar de Shea. Edited by Editor David Shea

Cover Photo Credit: Purchased Rights from iStockPhoto Photographer: David Shea—All rights reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4120-9656-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4251-3633-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4669-5737-4 (e)

Trafford rev. 11/13/2012

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Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Dedications

Part I Through A Child’s Eyes: Childhood and Adolescence

Chapter 1 Beginnings

Chapter 2 The Little Mother

Chapter 3 New Hope

Chapter 4 Happiness and Sadness

Chapter 5 The Calm Before The Storm

Part II A Dark Cloud Descends

Chapter 6 Good Friday: My Calvary

Chapter 7 The Ordeal Continues

Chapter 8 Prisoner & Wife

Chapter 9 To The Hell of Las Agujitas

Part III Abandonment And Desolation

Chapter 10 Trial and Error

Chapter 11 The Loving Wife

Chapter 12 The Big Opportunity

Chapter 13 Livingston, no solace

Part IV New Beginnings: Justice and Restoration

Chapter 14 Deliverance

Chapter 15 Restoration Through Love

Chapter 16 New Life—Old Problems

Chapter 17 Tranquility

Epilogue

About The Author

ENDNOTES

Introduction

I have written my autobiography of my childhood and adolescence for several reasons: first, to bring hope to those who suffer adversity through no fault of their own that tenacity and a positive outlook accomplishes much; second, to share my story with family and other people who know something about what I had to suffer but who do not know many of the details.

Guatemala is a small and very complex country composed of many ethnic groups and numerous indigenous languages. I was born and grew up in a region called by the locals, the East. This region lies southeast of Guatemala City, south of the main highway from Guatemala City to the Caribbean Sea, and borders Honduras and El Salvador. I cannot venture to say that the customs described in my story are representative of Guatemala, since I am not familiar with many other regions. In addition, I cannot say that the application of the law is the same now as it was in the nineteen—fifties and sixties. I immigrated to Canada in 1974 and have made only three short trips back to my country of birth since that time, and the purpose of these visits was to visit my family, not to make intensive studies of Guatemala’s politics, regions and customs.

I have not been able to find adequate or correct English translations for many of the social customs and objects mentioned in this book. In order to aid the reader, I have included many standard Spanish, Guatemalan dialectical Spanish, and local Mayan indigenous words with their English translation. More often than not, I could not even find the academic Spanish word for many indigenous words used by all Guatemalans of all races. Many photographs and maps are interspersed throughout the book to enable the reader to visually follow the text and to mentally enter into an unknown region of the world.

I wish to add one last note: most of what has been written and portrayed about Guatemala in the English language media the past thirty years revolves around political problems and I fear that this narrow reporting could skewer the reader’s perceptions and subsequent interpretations of my story. This is simply a story of one adolescent girl caught up in a dysfunctional family and judicial system, a male dominated society, and, on many occasions, being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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Acknowledgements

The first person I wish to thank is my husband, David Shea. As soon as I told him my complete story more than three decades ago he suggested that I write a book. And once I had started to write he was the one to talk to me and to console me when the memories became too overwhelming and I was ready to quit. He also has been my writing assistant, editor, photographer, computer assistant and final book layout person.

Next I wish to thank a good friend and work colleague, Marlaine Sitch, who also encouraged me to write my story. It was her enthusiasm that finally pushed me to start. She also was one of my proofreaders.

I wish to acknowledge and give special thanks to the people who assisted me with my writing: Sandra Maygard, Laura Patterson and María Luisa Rodas, who proofread the manuscript and gave me excellent suggestions; to Lavonne Hailes, Barry Greenspan and to many other colleagues for their support.

My sister, Señora Piedad Eneida Folgar de Castellanos, has been a wonderful help. She is a schoolteacher in Guatemala City and has taken the time to research and to find items of interest. She has made numerous trips to San Pedro Pinula and other towns on my behalf to get information that would have been impossible for me to find.

My cousin, Señor Ramiro Folgar, who used to live and farm in San Pedro Pinula, was a great source of information. I visited him on a recent trip to Guatemala and he provided details about the personalities and history of several key people in my story. He also was help in a geographical sense. With his information I was finally able to learn the names of places along with their locations where important events in my life took place.

I wish to thank Lic. Victor M. Cruz Rodriguez a lawyer in Guatemala City, who provided me invaluable information about the law, regional application of the law, and local customs in Guatemala. His information has helped clear up many mysteries of why the police and justice system acted in the way they did during the course of my ordeal in 1964.

Dedications

To my deceased mother, Manuela Josefa Lucero and to all of the angels who helped me and saved my life and who are now deceased. I was never in the position to thank them when they were alive in this world.

"Memory Sternal

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To our children: Merle, Michael, Norman, Walden and Elva. To Mr. Milton Wong. To my aunt, Sra. María Teresa Menendez de Buckley. To my sister, Sra. Piedad Eneida Folgar de Castellanos. Lastly, to two of my friends from my school days in Chi-quimula: Sras. Soila Elizabeth Guerra de Santos and Marta Estela Solís de Martínez.

May God Grant Them Many Years

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Guatemala, Central America

Part I

Through A Child’s Eyes:

Childhood and Adolescence

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Gabriela A. Folgar de Shea

Gabriela in the Central Plaza in El Progreso Guastatoya, town of birth-2005

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Chapter 1

Beginnings

Like all humans, I do not remember my birth. By the time we wake up too ourselves, we are little children... We live like latecomers at the theatre: we must catch up as best we can, divining the beginningfrom the shape of later events.

—Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale—

The night was similar to any other night. I went to bed, the sound of my mother’s sewing machine was humming like a lullaby, lulling me to sleep. Even at five years of age I was a light sleeper, waking up every time my mother opened the door to the patio to see if my father was coming home and waking up for sure when my father came home and knocked on the door. But on this particular evening I did not hear him entering the house. Suddenly, I awoke to the sound of his voice. I could tell right away that this was not an argument with my mother. His voice was different—more like a desperate cry.

Chepita, where is the gun, I am finished, I am lost and I don’t want to live anymore!

I heard my mother trying to calm him down. Carmelino, be quiet you’re going to wake up the children, please tell me what has happened?

No, don’t ask me questions, just give me the gun, where is it? I want to die!

She pleaded once more, Please, Carmelino, remember the children are sleeping. Please tell me what happened? Maybe I can help.

No, nobody can help me. No, I can’t tell you. It’s horrible. It is the worst. I might even lose my job. I want to die. Please give me the gun. Where is it? I want to kill myself. Where’s the gun? Please, tell me, where.. .is... the... gun?

Shhh, Carmelino, don’t talk so loud, she said in a hushed tone, tell me what happened and then I will help you look for the gun.

Their conversation quieted and I was no longer able to hear, for now they were whispering. My mother then came to my bedroom where a wooden trunk with a lock was kept. Through the transparent mosquito net I watched her. She placed the kerosene lamp on a table and opened the trunk. I could hear my father in the living room crying uncontrollably. I knew what my mother kept in that trunk. Every time she sent me to deliver the dresses that she had made, she took from me the money I had collected and went immediately into the bedroom. A few times I peeked and observed her putting some of the money in the trunk.

My mother went back to the living room and approached my father saying, Here Carmelino, this is all I have, maybe you can go to San Pedro Pinula (my father’s family home) tomorrow morning and try to borrow some money or sell some of your horses in order to make up the difference. I will keep this money here until you come back.

The next morning my mother’s eyes were swollen from crying and she told us that my father had gone to San Pedro Pinula.

Several years later when I questioned my mother about this incident she told me what had happened: Your father had gone to Guatemala City to collect his monthly salary together with the monthly salary of some or all of the teachers who worked at the same school with him. After he had returned to El Progreso, instead of going straight home, he went to gamble and lost all the money. This was not the first time your father had the thought of killing himself after having lost money by gambling. That’s why I had hidden the gun from him in the first place.

Although I was only five years old I had guessed the source of the problem long before my mother’s explanation because I had been awakened several times previous to this incident (and afterwards too) by the noise of their arguments. The arguments always revolved around the same issue—my father’s gambling. I was unable to understand what gambling meant at that time. I knew, however, that it was related to some kind of money matters and that it was a constant source of sadness in our home.

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My baptismal name is Gabriela Antonia Folgar-Lucero, the Lucero part of my name is my mother’s family name and the Fol-gar part is my father’s family name. I was born on November 7, 1948 in the small provincial town of El Progreso Guastatoya, in the province (departamento) of El Progreso, Guatemala-Central America. El Progreso Guastatoya is situated approximately one hundred and fifty kilometers southeast of Guatemala City and due to the winding roads it takes about one and a half hours to travel there from the capital. The town is very hot, for it sits in a valley, and as I remember, the people were very friendly. It had one very large and beautiful school, ESCUELA FEDERAL DE EL PROGRESO. This is where I attended grade one in 1955 at the age of six until the beginning of grade two when I was seven. This school was a boys’ school in the morning and a girls’ school in the afternoon. Our school uniform was white and blue, symbolizing the colours of the Guatemalan flag. The town also had a beautiful colonial Catholic church. I am using the past tense to describe this town here because, unfortunately, it was situated on top of the epicenter of the horrible fourth of February earthquake in 1976 and was totally destroyed with a great loss of life.* Only two buildings were left intact, the elementary school and the church on the main plaza (minus its vaulted roof). On a recent visit I observed that the town has been completely rebuilt and it looks better than it did before.*

I am the second child of Luis Carmelino Antonio Folgar and Manuela Josefa Lucero. People in Guatemala are often classified by their racial make-up—Indigenous, European or Ladino (mixed-mestizo). People of pure European blood make up a very small percentage of the population, although they are quite often in positions of power. About fifty percent of Guatemala’s population is of pure Mayan Indian decent. Ladinos make up most of the remaining population. Some Ladinos have the European features of the people of Spain, which is the case in my mother’s family and others have more Indian features, which is the case in my father’s family.

My father was much older than my mother. He had been hired to be her home—schooling teacher. He told me that he fell crazily in love with her. My mother, on the other hand, told me that she needed to get out of her mother’s house and it was a good opportunity to do this by marrying him. She was seventeen years old and he was forty-one.

In 1955 our family moved from El Progreso Guastatoya to Sanarate, another town in the province of El Progreso. I finished grade two at the boys’ school where my father was the principal. In the beginning of 1957 my father was transferred again, this time to his hometown of San Pedro Pinula (San Pay-dro Pee-noo-la), a town in which he always had wanted to teach. He was the principal of the boys’ elementary school and as a result, I was allowed to attend this school for grades three, four and five. My father was my teacher in grade four.

A casual outside observer of my life in El Progreso, Sanarate and San Pedro Pinula, from birth to age eleven in 1959, would have said that I was living a normal and uneventful life. But the reality of my world was quite different. At a very early age I realized that the relationships between my parents, between my brothers and me, and between my parents and all of their children were not the type of relationships I was observing in other families. My earliest observations in this regard were that other children were allowed to play, had toys and enjoyed treats. I observed that other children went out and socialized with both of their parents. None of this was part of my life in my early years. Of course, at that age I was not able to draw conclusions or to connect these observations to family dynamics.

As far back as I can remember I thought that I was not being treated fairly and had to defend myself, mostly around the differences of expectations between boys and girls. Whenever I saw inequality between my older brother and me I would always challenge it and ask why. I recall questioning my father when I was as young as six years of age, Why do I always have to do the dishes? Is my brother a king? Where’s the crown on his head? Why doesn’t he sweep?

My father would then become very angry and tell me that I had a big mouth and was insolent. I was never disrespectful toward my father. He became angry with me because he just could not handle my logic. My mother always tried to smooth things over by advising me, Just do your chores quietly.

Since I was the only girl attending a boys’ school, I was in academic competition with boys and therefore, at a quite young age I was in a position to see that I was on an equal intellectual footing with them. I was a keen observer of human behaviour, a thinker, an excellent student, and especially a talker. My struggle with my father and Guatemala’s cultural preference for all things male would be a defining battle in my life. I could never accept, beginning at a very early age, that I was inferior and less capable just because I was a girl. The struggle for fairness and equality was the crucible where the combative part of my personality was refined. My stubbornness and fearlessness to speak up to injustice would be one of the causes of the many troubles I was to suffer in the future. However, this stubbornness also gave me the strength to survive horrible events and to later achieve my greatest personal victories.

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My mother was a very nice looking woman possessing a beautiful body. Every time we went out men would look at her and make comments to her, comments that I did not understand at that time. When this happened she started walking very rapidly and say to me, Hurry, walk faster.

Sometimes I asked her, Why do men look at you and say things when you pass by?

She always only answered, They’re just retarded.

I spent most of my free time with my mother, up to the time my parents separated when I was almost eleven years old. I was what she called, her right arm. Since she was always busy with her sewing, I was the one to take care of the cooking, cleaning, washing and ironing of the clothes. I also helped her with minor things in her sewing business such as doing button holes, attaching buttons to dresses, hemming sleeves and skirts, and keeping the charcoal iron ready and hot at all times. I ran all the errands to buy the notions and sewing supplies.

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She would write me a list and I would show this paper to the store clerk. Quite often I had to make four to six trips to the fabric store to exchange notions and sewing supplies until I brought home the right ones. I also delivered the dresses to her customers. My mother gave me ten percent of the total bill for doing this work. With this money I helped my mother with her expenses by buying my own socks and shoes. I started doing these chores before reaching the age of six. I loved helping my mother with the sewing, but I was so tired from all of the other work I had to do in the house that many times I fell asleep while doing my schoolwork. When this happened I had to get up at five o’clock in the morning in order to finish before leaving for school.

My mother used to sing while she was sewing. I learned quite a few Mexican rancheros by listening to her. Sometimes we sang together. She made beautiful dresses for me from the fabric remnants her customers left her and I believe that I was probably the best-dressed girl in the elementary school. Many times I wanted to learn how to operate the sewing machines but she never really had the time to teach me.

My mother was caring, but not affectionate. I cannot remember her ever hugging any of us children. When I was sad or hurt and came to her for some comfort she just pushed me away saying, Stop that mushiness. She was very physical when she disciplined her children. Whenever my brothers or I did something wrong she took a belt and hit us very hard. She not only hit the child who was at fault but every one of us as well. Her reasoning was, When you spank only one child, the other ones laugh. In order to prevent that, you have to spank them all together. She and my father had quite a few arguments due to her ways of disciplining us. My father did not use the belt, but made us pay for our mistakes with chores. If we did not do the chores as soon as he had told us to do them, then the number increased.

In spite of her harshness when punishing us children, my mother had sympathy for the needs of a child and she tried to provide us, within her limited means, with treats such as the occasional ice cream or candy, items my father would never dream of spending money on. My mother genuinely loved her children, even if her ways of demonstrating this love were limited.

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When I was six years old I passed by a store on my way to and from school where a most beautiful doll was on display in the window. Every day I stopped and took a few minutes to admire this doll. It was clothed in a beautiful green dress and was placed in a seated position. From the doll’s neck hung a tag that read, Q5.00. Five Quetzals was a lot of money in those days. It was the equivalent of five American dollars. Possessing only a rudimentary idea of mathematics at my age, I had no notion of wages and prices of items. The only thing I knew was that my mother was charging one Quetzal for each dress she made and this would take her more than a half a day to finish. I had an idea, therefore, that the doll was very expensive, but at my age I was only looking at how beautiful it was and wishing that Santa Claus would bring it to me for Christmas. Every evening I went to bed thinking about the doll and dreaming about having it in my arms.

I do not recall all the conversations I had with my mother about the doll prior to Christmas. I only remember talking about the doll and constantly pestering her about it. She always told me that it was too expensive to buy. This is when I started to figure out that Santa Claus did not exist. If he did exist, I thought, he only brought toys to rich children.

The last day of school was on Friday, October 21. On this day I took extra time coming home from school, stopping at the market to look at the doll. I knew it might be my last opportunity to see it, because I was no longer going to be walking past the store now that school was finished. Of course, when I got home my mother was very worried. My father, who usually arrived after me, was already home and very upset.

What happened to you, where have you been? she asked.

With tremendous excitement I replied, I stopped at the market to look at the doll.

My mother looked at me sympathetically and said, You really like that doll, don’t you?

My father then interrupted, So, I guess you’re not hungry now.. .you got full by looking at the doll.

Why do you have to open your big snout? My mother angrily shot back at him.

Later that evening I was sitting by my mother’s side while she was sewing and I asked her, Why does Santa Claus never bring us toys for Christmas? Is Santa real?

She did not want to destroy that magic of my fantasy world, but I knew the answer when she looked at me with teary eyes and told me, Tomorrow, you will deliver some dresses I have just finished. If the people pay right away, we’ll go to the market and look at that doll. Maybe we can buy it.

I now knew that my mother was my Santa Claus.

When I delivered the dresses I made sure I told the people that my mother needed the money right away and when I returned home she and I went to the market. She bought me the doll and told me that it was my birthday gift. My seventh birthday was only a few days away on November the seventh.

Sadly, the magic and excitement of the doll lasted only as long as our return journey to the house from the market. That doll caused a huge argument between my mother and father because my mother had spent money on something so superfluous, as my father put it.

I do not remember how many times I played with that doll, not many. Each time I played with it there was a fight between my parents. After a few days I sat the doll on top of my father’s radio and never played with it again so as to not cause problems between the two of them. When we moved to other houses and towns I again sat the doll on the radio. Many years later my sister Eneida became the owner of that beautiful doll and as far as I know my father never had a problem with her playing with it (Please see page 313 for a family photo with me holding the doll).

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San Pedro Pinula is approximately two hundred and fifty kilometers from Guatemala City, situated at a high elevation. The temperature in the early morning and in the evening after sunset is usually around fourteen degrees Celsius, requiring a sweater to keep warm. By noon the hot sun pushes the temperature up as high as thirty degrees and one can walk around with shorts. Most of the town’s people were, and still are, farmers and ranchers. One might conclude from the surnames that this town to be populated by only five families, one of them being my father’s family. The two most popular names were Sandoval and Portillo. My father’s last name, Folgar, was also popular, but it took third place. It seemed to me like everyone in this town was related to everybody else.

San Pedro Pinula has a high percentage of indigenous people who live mostly in surrounding small villages where they do their farming. When I lived there most of the pure Mayans wore the typical and colourful dresses for which Guatemala is famous. On a recent visit, I observed that not much has changed, except in dress—now many of the Indian people wear western clothing. Most of the Indian population who live in the country still speak their native tongues, Pocomán in and around San Pedro, and have very limited Spanish. The men usually speak more Spanish than women. The people living inside the town of San Pedro Pinula are mostly mixed—Ladino.

A country town like this, with its close family relationships, might appear the ideal place to live; a place where everyone gets along with everyone else very well—but that was not the situation. There were many animosities among the families (clans) and people even fought within their immediate families. The issue was almost always about land and family honour. I remember hearing stories of brothers not talking to each other and of fathers not talking to their daughters or sons. People in this town knew the complete life history of everyone else. At that time residents of other cities or towns referred to the people in San Pedro Pinula as macheteros (people who fight with machetes, which is not a flattering term). Every man walked around the town, the farm or ranch carrying some sort of a weapon. Some carried guns, others had knives or machetes and some carried all three items.

Although the people in the town were very friendly and everyone knew each other, one learned at a very young age that the town had many dark secrets. Judging by the stories I heard, these secrets seemed to be always related to inter-familial fights. Many of these fights occurred when people had taken the law into their own hands, seeking revenge for the harm done to a brother, sister, father, or some other relative.

The concepts of revenge and defending one’s honour (blood feuds) loomed very large in the mentality of the people of this region. I remember my father telling me stories about someone who had killed another person in the town. Everyone knew who had committed the crime, including the victim’s family, but nobody would take the step to go to police or to seek justice in the right way. They would wait for the opportunity to avenge the death of their relative or loved one. I recall my father and other people mentioning the names of people from whom it was best to keep one’s distance. In those days, people in this town preferred to personally deliver justice to their enemies. Another way to personally see that justice was done was to bribe officials of the justice system. This still happens today. In Guatemala, justice is not available to everyone and is quite often not impartial. If one has money and can afford a good lawyer, one will usually prevail in court. Also, the justice system in Guatemala is not regionally uniform; it is often influenced by local and regional customs.

This region had another unsavory custom—the kidnapping of girls to become brides. My father told me stories of women in the town who were forced to marry the men who had kidnapped them. Where this custom originated, in Spain or from indigenous cultures, I do not know. This is how it worked: a man would kidnap a girl from her family, take her out into hiding, have forced or consensual sex with the girl and then force the girl to become his wife. This happened especially when a girl’s family did not consider a certain man as a suitable partner for their daughter. After the kidnapping, the girl’s family, more often than not, would acquiesce to the arrangement when the couple reappeared, since the daughter was no longer a virgin and quite often pregnant. I was told that the husband of one of my aunts had kidnapped her because her mother (my grandmother) was against their relationship. My father also told me that one of my uncles also had kidnapped his wife.

This is what happened to one of my cousins. She fell in love with a man who was her first cousin (first cousin relationships are, unfortunately, still common in rural Guatemala). Her father and mother totally disliked this fellow and in order to stop the relationship they managed to get her to become involved and engaged with a young man of whom they approved. On the day of her wedding while she was walking to the church wearing her wedding dress, her ex-boyfriend arrived on horseback with some of his friends. They snatched her from the entrance of the church, hoisted her onto a horse and disappeared into the countryside. Nobody dared to do anything. Eventually, the kidnapper and the girl were married, but my uncle never again spoke to his daughter or to his son-in-law and never met his grandchildren. It is amazing to think that an event such as this can still take place in the twentieth century. One might think that it could only occur in a gothic-romance novel or in a western adventure film.

It was also common for a woman to elope with her sweetheart when one or both families disapproved of their children’s chosen mate. Sadly, these practices also are still happening in certain areas of Guatemala, including the region around San Pedro Pinula.

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In San Pedro Pinula we lived in my paternal grandmother’s compound. With the word compound I am referring to a very large house that is divided into separate living quarters for the extended family. If this house were located in the country or on a farm it would be called an hacienda. The house was built in a rectangular shape with a courtyard in the middle. My grandmother’s house contained sixteen separate residences or apartments. It was situated on the main plaza of the town and was probably as old as the colonial period in Guatemala. My father’s part of the house faced the main plaza where the Indian-indigenous farmers brought their crops to be sold during market days on Thursdays and Sundays. The Municipality Building was situated on the north side of the plaza. On the west side were the two schools, one for boys and one for girls. On the south side there were two large houses, my grandmother’s compound and Mr. Ernesto Wong’s store and house. On the east side was the old colonial and historic church of Santo Domingo. This was a very pretty church built by the Dominicans in the seventeenth century. I always remember its big clock with Roman numerals. The plaza had an open area and a park-like area. In the park area, right in front of the church, there was a pretty gazebo for concerts. On the plaza right next to the south side of the park there was a fountain in the open area (please view a plan of the central plaza area on page 118).

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Mr. Wong’s store & house (left) and my grandmother’s house.

My Grandmother’s compound and Mr. Wong’s house abutted each other, the two houses occupying the complete street block on the south side of the plaza. Her house was much bigger than Mr. Wong’s, but it was not as pretty or as new. When you viewed the compound from the street it resembled a fort. The only thing one would see was a wall pierced with doors and windows. The outside walls were whitewashed and the whitewash had to be re-applied at least once every other year. But when one walked inside the compound through the main gate, he entered into a big courtyard, adorned with a colonial fountain (pila) and with tall, large trees. The sixteen apartments were of various sizes and each one had its own individual kitchen. These apartments surrounded the courtyard, motel style. There was only one outhouse having two stalls and a shower room, also with two stalls. Toward the west side of the house there was a big wooden door (portón) approximately four